


Suit and Action

by Naomida



Series: The Hauptman Verse [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Spells & Enchantments, Werewolf Mates, accidentally wrote in a plot in there but don't mind me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26460676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: Five months, a few friends and a mate weren’t enough to make a family. Too bad Beve had to learn it the hard way.
Relationships: Beve Perenolde/Varian Wrynn
Series: The Hauptman Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923574
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Suit and Action

There was a small brown box on her porch when she got home after her Monday morning yoga class.

She had taken up yoga after both Valeera and Dimitris had advised her to. It was a good way to get out of her head and house, and the Monday morning class was always almost empty. She felt relaxed after each class, in a good mood even, and while a small brown box didn’t make her feel suddenly bad, she did get more careful as she got up the three steps of her front porch, and approached it.

There was no sound coming out of the box, and it smelled very faintly of Varian’s discreet perfume, and leather, and peppermint.

She looked around, made sure that no one was watching, and let herself smile softly as she bent down and grabbed the box. She hadn’t seen the Alpha in a week, and while she hadn’t asked he  _had_ come to her house to announce that he would be traveling for work for the week right before leaving.

They were tiptoeing around each other, having no idea how to act ever since she had accepted him as a mate, almost five months before that.

She was fine with it.

Everyone still thought that she was a human witch, and each day made it more awkward for her to tell the truth –  not that Darbel wasn’t pushing her every chance she got to come clean. Beve understood where her friend was coming from – after all, she hadn’t taken it very well when she had first learned that Varian had not only made her part of the pack but also claimed her as his mate  behind her back . She had gotten over it after almost dying, and she hoped that when she finally found the right moment, he’d get over it too.

For now though, she got home, closed her front door behind her with her hip, and put the little box down on her kitchen counter. She’d swing by his house at the end of the afternoon, just to see. She couldn’t go right now, it would make her look a little desperate, and he probably had things to do anyway.

He was a busy man, after all.

She looked at the box, her smile not leaving her, and quickly crossed the main room of her little house to reach her bathroom and jump in the shower.

She showered in under five minutes and put her yoga outfit in the dirty clothes basket, before going back to her kitchen, grabbing a water bottle, and turning back to face the box.

It was a small rectangle, about as big as her hand. It didn’t have any holes in it to let something breathe – thankfully – but she couldn’t tell what could be inside. If it had been from anyone else, she would have already ripped it open to look at its content, but for some reason when it came to her neighbor, she was careful.

Someone knocked on her door before she could  ponder more over it, and she called for Darbel to get in – the witch always smelled like fruity perfume and heady incense, so it wasn’t hard to tell that it was her.

Darbel walked in without waiting another second, looking grave.

“I need you to stay very calm, Beve,” she said.

Beve, of course, did the exact opposite. She had never seen Darbel this serious before, not even when a crazed Otto had been going after her to kill her while she didn’t have any powers anymore.

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t tell you, and I don’t have enough details anyway, but I saw something, and I need you to promise me that no matter what happens, you will stay in Stormwind,” she said, walking to Beve and grabbing her by the arms, holding tight.

“Alright, I won’t go anywhere. What’s happening though?”

Darbel simply shook her head, looking sad. “I can’t tell you.”

“Is someone going to be hurt?”

Darbel didn’t move.

“Physically hurt?”

She shook her head, which made Beve frown.

“Are you here because something is gonna hurt my feelings?” she asked, not quite believing it even as she said the words.

“Beve,” whispered Darbel, before she was jumping and looking in the direction of the front door.

Exactly five seconds later, a car pulled up in front of the house.

“Promise me you will not leave the city, and don’t forget who loves you.”

“What?” replied Beve, completely lost, but Darbel had already let go of her and started leaving, brushing past Bolvar as she opened the front door and met him.

Beve would have followed her out if it hadn’t been for the werewolf standing in the way, so she simply sighed and let her friend go. She’d call her later and force her to say more.

For now, she  focused on Bolvar.

“Yes?”

“Is this a bad moment?” he asked, and she shook her head, inviting him in with a gesture.

Bolvar sent a look at the untouched box, smiling, and went to sit on her couch without prompting.

About four months  ago , Bolvar and Dimitris had helped her tear out her completely ruined brown carpet and replace it with some fake wooden floor that was still high quality enough to make the entire room – that was making up about 85% of her house – look that much better. The downside had been that all of her furniture now looked ratty and old, and she had spent all her spare money in the flooring  so she couldn’t get a new couch.

The blood stain from Elina dying in her living room was gone, but some nights she could still see it.

“Varian just came back,” said Bolvar as she sat down next to him. “You should open up that box.”

“What’s inside?”

“That’s a surprise,” he smiled, “but a good one, I promise.”

Beve believed him – Bolvar was the only werewolf she actually considered like a friend, and while she hadn’t asked about why and under which condition he was staying with Varian in his mansion, she was happy about it.

It was always good, to have allies nearby.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“No, I wanted to know if you wanted to grab lunch.”

“Sure,” she replied, eager to get out of the house and not think about that weird encounter with Darbel.

She left the box untouched on the kitchen counter and followed Bolvar to the mansion overlooking her house and overgrown garden.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


They were in the middle of laughing at some stupid story Anduin was telling them – the teenager had been in the kitchen already cooking when they had arrived, so they had joined him – when Varian and Mathias walked into the kitchen.

Beve met the Alpha’s eyes and addressed him a smile,  before she was pretending to be focusing back on Anduin.

In reality, she was hyper aware of Varian as he went to grab a plate and some cutlery, and then sat down next to Anduin, right in front of her.

He put some of the rice salad they had made in his plate, and started to listen intently to his son’s story about his geography teacher.  She knew he didn’t have to pretend to focus on his son – he loved the boy more than anything, and in those past few months it had been a shock to discover how wrong she had been about Varian, who looked perpetually angry and unapproachable from the outside.

From the inside, he was warm, although not one for big expressions of happiness, and placed the well being of his son and pack above everything else.

She hadn’t even known that he had a son, up until she had almost died and he had saved her.

His hand brushed against hers as he took her empty plate away while everyone else got up with their own plates, and she stayed right where she was sitting at the breakfast nook.  They all walked out once they had put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and as she had expected, Varian went and sat back down in front of her.

For a moment, they just looked at each other, and something in Beve’s stomach that she hadn’t realized was tensed finally relaxed.

“How was work?” she asked.

“Business as usual,” he said, “how was your week.”

“Same old,” she replied. She had quit her job as a trauma nurse at the hospital about one month after getting her full powers back. The smell of fear, despair and death at the hospital had been too much for her, and she had found herself wanting to plant her fangs into her patients’ limbs more times than she cared to admit.

“Nothing caught your eyes yet?”

“No, not yet.” In truth she had no idea what kind of job she wanted to have. She had become a nurse kind of randomly, but had found that she liked feeling useful

Now, she had no idea what to do. Maybe she’d try to work as a barista like Bolvar.

“Did you get my present?” he asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t have time to open it.”

He had a slight smirk at that. “You should make the time. I think you would like it.”

“Alright,” she said, feeling like her entire body was on fire as his smirk grew bigger.

It felt good though, which was surprising since her element was ice, but she was getting used to  experiencing contradicting things when it came to Varian.

“Does it mean that you’re free today?”

“Depends for what.” She was feeling playful, when it came to him, and she could feel that it was the same for him.

If she focused hard enough, she could get a feel of his emotions and mood, could even be in his head, just for a second. She tried not to do it though, because it was more interesting and  fun to get to know him the other way – by learning what his facial expressions, mostly consisting of furrowed brows and long gazes, meant.

“I thought we could go shopping,” he said, which was far from what she had been expecting.

“Shopping?”

“Don’t make that face,” he chuckled, “I’m redoing the kitchen in the penthouse, I thought you could come and tell me which granite or marble counter would look best.”

“Alright.”

It sounded like a great way to spend her afternoon, if she was being honest.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


They got off the elevator and into the penthouse laughing, walking to the dark blue couch and falling next to each other on it, still smiling and chuckling. If you would have told her six month ago that she would be spending  the afternoon with him, laughing and having, if she was being honest, the best time ever, she wouldn’t have believed it.

They had chosen the new look of the kitchen together – he hadn’t really needed to redo it, but the marble was cracked on the floor and counter where Otto had thrown her and tried to spill her brains all over the floor, so she understood his want to see it all disappear and be replaced by something new.

It was a first for her, to go out to some store and shop for an entire kitchen. It felt intimate,  and she liked it.

She was pretty sure he liked it too, considering the way his eyes were caressing down her face to her lips, before he looked at her eyes again.

And here was the thing. Flirting for five entire months had made things a little electric between them, with all the long gazes and little brushes of fingers, so even though it had only been a week since they had last seen each other, Beve felt – starving, was probably the best word.

She bit down on her lip as she sat up straighter in the couch, his eyes going right for her mouth,  and she decided that she would do something stupid, because she had been cautious for long enough now.

His hair was soft when she tangled her fingers into it, at the base of his nape,  and his skin was warm when she put her other hand on his soft cheek, and he simply looked up at her with eyes that said everything she had to know about her actions.

He was waiting for her to do this. He would wait for her to cross the space separating them – would probably wait another five months, if that was what she wanted.

Lucky for him, she wasn’t a patient person.

She leaned down, eyes closing as their lips met, something warm and a little bit magical surging through her, from her lower belly, up to her throat. It was more intense than she had expected, especially when he made a soft sound at the back of his throat, and reached up to hold her face between his large and warm palms.

She moved, leaning against him, and slipped her tongue inside his mouth,  white hot desire and pleasure running down her back as he kissed back and let go of her face with one hand the wrap his arm around her waist and pull her closer, and on top of him.

They made out for a while, only stopping after Varian had flipped them over and they had started to grind against each other, and for a moment, as the Alpha was pressing down on her and meeting her eyes with his golden ones, slightly out of breath, she couldn’t believe that it had taken them six years to start doing this.

“Your eyes,” he whispered, voice hoarse, making her shiver.

It took her a second to understand what he meant, and she barely kept herself from swearing out loud.

Explaining why she had white eyes wasn’t exactly something she had prepared herself for, and for a second she just looked up at him, lost.

Maybe it was the perfect moment to finally tell him her secret.

She didn’t have to think about it for more than a second.

“Varian,” she started, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, “there’s something I have to tell you.”

He frowned slightly, and moved so their legs were tangled a little more comfortably, but before Beve could start talking again, Varian’s phone loudly started ringing.

He groaned, let go of her for a second to extract his phone from his pocket, and resumed his position. He sent a very quick look at the screen as he was reaching to put the phone down on the coffee table – and froze.

Frowning, Beve turned to look at his phone, but he was already sitting up on the couch and answering with a tensed “What is it?”

“Varian,” breathed a woman on the other end. She sounded like she was crying, and Beve couldn’t look away as she watched Varian pale and get up entirely from the couch.

“What’s going on?” he asked, voice going suddenly soft.

“Can you come and get me please? I just arrived at the port…. I’m in trouble.” she sniffed, and Beve watched as Varian tensed, and immediately started striding in the direction of the elevator.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, don’t move.”

The woman on the phone muffled a sob as the Alpha punched the elevator’s button with force.

He seemed to realize that he was forgetting something just as the elevator’s doors pinged open, and he turned around to look at Beve, who hadn’t moved from the couch.

“Sorry, this is an emergency,” he said, and she nodded.

She wasn’t supposed to be able to hear what the other person on the phone with him had said, and it wasn’t her business to know why he would drop everything for a crying woman anyway. She nodded and gritted her teeth, telling herself that jealousy was a bad thing, and that she was too old and wise for it as she watched Varian step into the elevator, and disappear.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Varian had driven her to the penthouse, so she had to take the bus to get home, and by the time she arrived she had managed to talk herself into a good dose of paranoia. Usually she would have found it weird, but not too much. After all, Varian was the Alpha of a pretty huge pack, and she barely knew half of the members. It would be normal if one of his werewolf would call him if she was in trouble and needed help.

The problem, was that Darbel had come to her house a few hours before, looking serious and making her promise not to leave the city and to remember who loved her.

It was weird, and Beve didn’t believe in coincidences.

Even weirder, she found Dimitris, her youngest brother, sitting on her front porch.

“You look like shit, what’s wrong with you?” he asked as she joined him and sat down too.

“Nothing, I think I’m making a problem out of nothing.”

He nodded, looking closely at her.

“You smell weird,” he said, and she shrugged a shoulder.

“Why are you here?”

“Aliden contacted me,” he said, and Beve felt the bottom of her stomach detach from the rest and sink somewhere in her guts.

“You had a seizure?” she asked.

“No, it was in a dream.”

She snorted. “Of course he’d use the easy way with you. What did he want?”

“He wanted to talk to you, but said you’re blocking him.”

Beve sighed, and leaned against her brother’s side, suddenly feeling tired.

“I know what he wants, and I don’t care to hear it.”

“Do you have a choice though?” asked Dimitris, leaning his head against hers. “Things were strange, when I left Alterac. Everything was hanging up in the air. We could all tell something was missing, and we all knew what it was.”

“Me,” she sighed.

“You,” he nodded. “The law is the law. You survived, now you need to step up.”

“I don’t want to be Queen.”

“Then do what you have to do to give the power to rule back to Aliden, or whoever else.”

“You know exactly why I haven’t done anything yet,” she replied, and she had to straighten up when he leaned away from her to meet her eyes. “If I go back, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave, at least not for long, and my life is here now.”

“I swear Beve if this is about those werewolves…”

“No!” she said, although she knew it was, at best, a bad lie. “Look, I was the only one willing to do anything when shit hit the fan, and I haven’t forgotten that.”

For a fleeting second, she regretted her words when she saw the face Dimitris made. He had been on the first line to try and stop her, when she had gone against their father and his small army of warlock orcs – in fact, she had been pretty sure, up until the moment she had seen him on the parking lot of a motel in Booty Bay five months ago, that she had killed him when he had tried to stop her and she had blown up half of the Southern tower.

The second passed, and she squared her shoulders.

“My only goal was to save Alterac, and I got cast out for it. You’re the one who decided to take matter into his own hands and use the law of ruling.”

“You gave me no choice!” he immediately defended himself, like she had expected him to. “Alterac was in shambles when I left, and I’m not sure it’s much better now. It’s all too much for Aliden, he’s never been trained and isn’t as strong as you, we both know that.”

“That’s not my problem anymore.”

Dimitris scowled. “It is, even if you don’t want it to be. At some point, you’re gonna have to open another portal, at least to let me go back, and then you’ll see.”

It was true, she knew it very well, which was why Dimitris was still with her here instead of back on Alterac. She had trained her entire life to become the Queen, and had abandoned that right the moment she had been stabbed by her father.

She had made peace with it, had even managed to be content with living as a human – although having her powers back had been the best, most unexpected surprise, and nothing made her quite as happy as running on four legs as a panther.

Still. She had a home here, and a few friends, and a mate.

Hell, she even had a pack.

“Tell Aliden I don’t give a fuck,” she said as she got up, gritting her teeth at the betrayed look Dimitris sent her.

“Sure, because pretending to be a human and playing house with the werewolves is better than being with your people and leading them as you should,” he spat as she opened her front door.

“My people let their ruler strip me of all power, and then they let me bleed out on some mountain. I don’t owe them anything.”

She walked into her house, telling herself that the pang in her chest had nothing to do with how true and hurtful his words were.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She had fallen asleep on her couch after her conversation with her brother, and when she woke up, the sun was setting and her house was full of shadows. She laid there for a while, feet hanging off the couch and her television remote digging into her hip, and wondered how this was her life.

Just six months ago, it had been easy. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Now, she had powers she had to keep hidden, a pack that hated her, a mate that she didn’t know how to act around, and two brothers on her back.

It was better than her first two years out of Alterac of being alone and wandering around with no goal, but she still wish she could take a breather.

She gave herself five more minutes of feeling sorry for herself, before getting up and deciding to do something about her problems.

She’d go to the pack’s mansion first, to see if Varian was there and ask him about this emergency of his. Then, she’d tell him the truth, because he deserved it and it was wrong of her to keep quiet every time someone mentioned her being a witch. For the pack and her brothers, she’d tackle it another day.

Varian was more important, at least in her mind, and she felt much better as she stepped out of her house, and started walking through her unkept garden, up the slope that lead to his.

It took her one meter to realize that something was wrong – her right hand was shaking, and there was a loud buzzing sound in her right ear. She stopped walking, wiped at the blood running from her nose, and just had a second to swear before her muscles were tensing and she was collapsing on the ground.

A seizure.

 _They’re back Beve_ , said Aliden’s voice in her ear when she had expected to see him. _I can’t keep us hidden for much longer, I need your help. Please._

She tried to ask who he was talking about, but could only moan undignifyingly into the weeds she was laying in.

_I can’t open a new portal to get us out, not now that you earned your place back, and I don’t know the secrets of the Mountain like you do. You need to come here._

_Can’t_ , she thought as hard as she could, and she could smell her brother’s disappointment as the seizure stopped as abruptly as it had started, and she was left panting on the ground.

“Fucking great,” she muttered, stumbling to her feet and wiping her nose again. It didn’t look like it would stop bleeding anytime soon, and it was another ruined t-shirt for her, but she was tired and her back was now hurting, so she continued her climb up the slope to the mansion instead of doing the sensible thing and turning back to her own place.

There was some werewolf guarding the back door that lead to the kitchen, and Beve didn’t know him but he snarled when she bypassed him to get inside the house. She chose to ignore it –  _focus, first checking on Varian, then telling him the truth, and after that making sure he won’t hunt me down for sport_ – and found the gigantic kitchen completely empty despite all the lights being on.

That made her stop, and listen closely. There were people on the second floor of the house, but no one that her nose recognized. There were a few suitcases in the entryway when she wandered there, which was weird since Varian was a hundred percent the type to unpack the second he came back from traveling, but nothing else.

She got out from the front door, just in time to see Mathias walk up the long gravel path leading up to the house, and he raised an eyebrow as he approached.

“Why is your nose bleeding?”

“No reason. Where is everyone?”

He pursed his lips, and said nothing.

She knew that he didn’t really hold her close to his heart, and she felt the same way for him, but Mathias was a professional guy. She was his Alpha’s official mate, and he respected it.

“He didn’t tell you what’s going on?” he asked after a moment of thinking about it.

“No.” The he in question was obviously Varian. “He left this afternoon for an emergency, and I didn’t hear anything since then.”

She hadn’t exactly checked her phone, but she also never had it anywhere near her and Varian knew not to text or call her if he had a message to deliver. Usually, he came himself or sent one of his werewolf – mostly Bolvar, or Valeera, who seemed to be the only ones to like her.

For a second there, Mathias looked at her with pity, and a wave of panic took over Beve. The next second, his face was carefully blank, and that only made her feel worse.

“What’s going on?” she asked, taking a step to him.

“That’s not my place to tell you. If he hasn’t said anything, then it’s for a good reason, now let me pass, I need to do something.”

“Where is he?”

“I’ll let you know when I find out,” he grumbled, shouldering her away and disappearing into the house.

For a second, Beve just stood there, looking at the closed front door, having no idea what to do.

“Fuck,” she whispered, before stepping into the house too and going back to the kitchen to get to the phone. She typed in the only number she knew by heart, Darbel’s, and listened anxiously as it rang, and rang, and rang, before giving her an error message.

Not even the voicemail.

“ _Damn it_!” she grumbled, putting the phone back down and going back out of the house, from the front door so she didn’t have to see the wolf guarding the other door.

Guess she’d have to wait another day.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


There was a werewolf planted on her front porch when she woke up the next morning.

“I’m here for protection,” he announced, his gigantic arms crossed over a large chest.

She liked Turalyon, so she managed a polite smile.

“Is Varian home?”

“Yes, but he was extremely busy when I left.”

“Alright,” she said, before going back inside to change out of pajamas and into real clothes, before going to the pack’s house.

Turalyon followed her, but he kept a polite distance, so she let him be. They didn’t know each other more than in passing,  but he had always been respectful and nicely polite to her, even before she had become a part of the pack so even if finding a bodyguard in front of her house in the morning wasn’t ideal, at least it was someone she kind of liked.

The pack’s mansion, when she arrived, was the exact opposite of how she had found it the night before. It was full to the brim with people coming and going, eating in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones or simply napping on the couches and chairs. She took a look around the kitchen, then the living-room, seeing no one she usually talked to, and decided to try her chance by simply asking everyone.

“Where’s Varian?” she asked.

“Took Anduin away this morning,” grumbled the guy who was presently coming inside the room. He went to sit into one of the numerous and big armchairs, and she knew she wouldn’t get more information out of him when he closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.

She turned to look at the fireplace in the center of the wall, and Varian’s extremely expensive smartphone sitting right on top of it, and sighed before crossing the space to it and grabbing the phone.

As usual, it required no code to unlock, and she called Anduin, who picked up after three rings.

“Who is this?” asked Bolvar, which only had Beve frown and start to really get worried.

“Bolvar? It’s Beve, what the fuck is going on?”

She had started to swear a lot more frequently, now that she was spending more time with the Alpha, but she’d think about that later, when she finally managed to see him.

“Now’s not a good time,” he replied, and she could hear voices coming from behind him – one was low and familiar.

“Pass me Varian,” she ordered, not even realizing that she was putting power behind the words until she realized that all the wolves in the room had turned to look at her.

She pretended that she couldn’t see them as she quickly walked out of the house, and as far as she could down the slope while something was moving on the other side of the line, before Varian’s gruff voice asked “What?”

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he snapped, before sighing slowly. “Nothing that you need to worry about. Did you see Turalyon?”

“Yes, why do I need protection?”

“I can’t tell you right now, but you need to promise me that you’ll let him keep an eye on you.”

“I can defend myself,” she immediately replied, feeling a sudden surge of anger, “you know damn well that I can! So tell me right now what is going on.”

“Beve I can’t–” he started, abruptly trailing off when a feminine voice, the same one that had called him the day before, called his name in the background.

There was a small silence as Beve waited, something hot and choking crawling up her throat.

“I need to go,” announced Varian, before ending the call, and Beve, in her rage, threw his phone in the vague direction of his house, before furiously striding in the direction of her home.

If he didn’t want to tell her  _fine_ . She’d find out herself.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Sneaking past a werewolf wasn’t that hard, when you were like Beve, and she found herself sitting down on Darbel’s gigantic dark red sofa two hours later, bouncing her knee nervously. She wasn’t one to worry so much usually, or even feel  so bad just because someone was ignoring her and making sure that she was kept out of the loop, but she had a bad feeling about all this, and wanted to know more.

Darbel didn’t say anything for a long time, simply looking down at her hands holding on a big mug of herbal tea.

“What do you know about Varian’s life?”

Beve shrugged a shoulder. “He has a security company, lives next to me, has a son and is an Alpha.”

“Nothing else?” she pressed, and Beve recognized the look in her eyes. There was something going on, her instinct was right, and Darbel felt like she couldn’t tell her, but wanted to guide her in the direction of the answer.

“I know he has scars on his face when he shouldn’t. He met Bolvar before any of them were turned into werewolves.”

“Yes,” whispered Darbel, nodding. “What else?”

“I don’t know… He doesn’t talk about his past.”

“Think about his life outside of the pack.”

Frowning, Beve took a moment to really think about it. He had his job, but couldn’t talk about it most of the time because  it involved a lot of secret contracts with government agencies, and he had his son.

“Anduin,” she said, and Darbel smiled.

“Anduin,” she repeated.

“So something happened with his son?”

“Family is a tricky thing,” was the only thing the witch replied, before immediately changing the subject.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


It stayed with Beve, that sentence.  _Family is a tricky thing_ . Didn’t she know about that! But that didn’t help her much, and so she went hiking on four legs into the mountains, to get her mind right and calm down.

She hunted around for a while, catching some birds and a few rabbits, before catching a scent that seemed out of place but strangely familiar. She stopped, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, but the scent was gone.

Still, she decided to investigate.

As a panther – she still hadn’t found a better word to describe this form – she was built to climb up dangerous cliffs and get on top of trees, so she did just that, moving silently and quickly, keeping the wind in front of her in case whatever she was hunting down was still hanging around.

It took a little bit of time and effort, but she managed to pick up the scent again, feeling excited when she realized there was some magic clinging in the air, making it harder to follow the trail.

Good, the harder the hunt, the more satisfying it was for her once she inevitably caught her prey.

The scent took her to a wild arc around the city, going almost the full length of it, which was quite impressive considering the size of Stormwind. She could tell she had caught the trail around its beginning, the scent of old leather and summer rain and a bloody dagger growing stronger.

She frowned, and stopped walking for a second.  _The scent of a bloody dagger?_ What the hell was that supposed to mean?

She pondered over it, but nothing more came to mind, and she started walking again. Sometimes her instinct manifested in some strange ways, and it happened at times that she didn’t understand what her body and senses were telling her, but she wasn’t too worried. It always ended up coming to her, and she knew that this time too, she’d eventually figure it out.

She circled around the last spot where she could smell her prey, but it seemed like it had completely vanished into thin air, and she started on the long way back with more questions than answers.

It must have taken her about six hours, to cross the city using the absolute worst path ever, and then go back the same way, and when she arrived at her house, Turalyon was standing straight as an arrow on her front porch, looking extremely unhappy with her.

“Varian is going to kill me,” he groaned between his teeth when she got out of her shitty car – Mathias had found it after she had ditched it in an effort to outrun a crazed Otto coming after her a few months ago – and joined him on the porch.

“Is he home?”

“Not yet.”

She rolled her eyes, and walked inside her house, leaving the  door open behind her in an invitation for the werewolf.

He took it and accepted the tupperware she took from the fridge and handed him.

“You should warm it up while I take a shower. You might as well come in if you’re gonna have to play bodyguard all night long.”

“It’s only five forty in the afternoon,” he said, eyes trailed to the little plastic box.

It was risotto, brought by Varian, as always. Beve had never really cooked a day in her life, so it had worked out well for her that her neighbor liked to show his authority and dominance by providing delicious food.

Turalyon looked positively famished, so she let him figure out how to work her ancient microwave while she disappeared into her small bathroom, taking the time to strip and just stand in front of the full body mirror facing her shower.

All the weight she had lost while she had been dying a few months before had come back, but her scar looked as disgusting as it had since she had gotten it. It was red, and bumpy, and pulled at the skin around her rib cage.

An ugly and painful reminder of her father’s last actions.

Her thought drifted to the bloody dagger he had used. There was a thin white scar running down her right leg, and a slightly bigger one on her left hip when he had first attacked her with the magical artifact after having thrown her right through a tower, but she had managed to fight and hurt him too, with another dagger of her own. It had been a lesser weapon in terms of magical properties, but Beve had been too desperate to lose.

That hadn’t stopped her from getting stabbed right between the ribs, the long dagger piercing through her lung to claw at her heart.

The memory made her shiver violently, and she forced herself to step into the shower and turn the cold water on before she could think about what had happened next – how she had fallen into the snow, knowing that she was going to die in a matter of minutes, how she had raised her hand when he had smirked down at her victorious, how she had thrown the spell, killing him on the spot.

The Mountain had screamed at the same time as her as half of her soul had seemed to be torn out of her body before she was thrown out of Alterac, and into this plane of existence, nothing but a bleeding human with a collapsed lung and a fatal wound.

It hadn’t turned out too badly for her, but there were phantom pains that she knew would never go away, and some things she would never talk about out loud, to anyone, ever.

She grabbed her shower gel, and forced herself to think about butterflies and small kittens as she washed up fast. Turalyon was waiting, and while she had eaten a little bit during her long hunt around the mountains, it had been snacks at best and it was important that she stayed well-fed, considering how stressed she was becoming.

There was a pile of clean clothes on top of her washing machine, and she chose some black yoga pants and a large and thick electric blue plaid shirt. She couldn’t exactly picture Varian wearing electric blue, but she knew for a fact she had stolen it from him at some point – it was his size, and his scent clung to it despite the fact that she had just washed the shirt.

Bolvar had told her that it was normal to want to wear her mate’s scent, even though she hadn’t asked him anything – after all, she probably knew more about mates than him – and she told herself that it was just to boost her self esteem that she was wearing his top right now. For some reason she still felt a little bad about the way he had left her almost without a backward glance on the couch of the penthouse after they had just made out – and she seriously still couldn’t believe that it had  _finally_ happened.

She was screwed when it came to him, but she had finally started to accept that fact.

In the kitchen third of the main room of her house she found Turalyon sitting at her small table in front of a plate of risotto, waiting for her. She took place in front of the other plate he had served, wished him bon appétit and started eating without waiting more.

They both shoveled the food into their mouth without taking any break, and once they were done Beve just leaned against the back of her chair and smiled with satisfaction.

“You’re lucky, he doesn’t cook his infamous risotto just for anyone.”

She snorted. “I’m lucky he remembers to bring some to me.”

Turalyon smiled, and Beve reached for the television remote on the kitchen counter behind her, and turned it on.

For a while they simply watched some television game where participants had to answer questions about music and movies – none of which Beve had any idea about. She had never seen a movie in a theater in the decade she had been here, and wasn’t about to start now.

She grew bored after a while, and walked to the bedroom part of the room to grab her phone from under her pillows, flipping it open and looking at the photo on her background.

It was a joke photo that Anduin had taken and put there, showing a scowling Varian who was looking at something out of frame, while she was laughing just behind him, one hand on his shoulder and her eyes closed.

She had been laughing at Mathias, and a second after the photo had been taken Varian had started to laugh at his second too, and as she looked at it she remembered about his little present that she had yet to open and was still waiting for her on the kitchen counter.

She decided that she’d open it as soon as she was done, and she called his number.

He knew to answer when it came from her own phone – knew that it meant it was important – which was why she had to sit down when a woman’s voice – the same fucking woman she had already heard twice on the phone with Varian – answered.

“Tiffin Wrynn, what can I do for you?”

Turalyon sharply looked up at her and got to his feet, and Beve scowled.

“Tiffin what?” she asked, tone more aggressive than she had wanted to let shown.

“Tiffin Wrynn on the phone,” repeated the woman, still sounding as peachy as a second ago. “Who is this?”

Beve was absolutely positive that Varian had never mentioned a single female family member. No sister, no daughter, not even a cousin. It could be possible that he would keep it from her – after all, she was pretty sure he didn’t know about Aliden – but he didn’t exactly have any reason to keep that kind of secret, unlike her.

“I’m Beve, who are _you_?”

“I told you who I am,” started this _Tiffin_ , sounding less patient, but Beve cut her.

“Why are you answering Varian’s phone? I need to talk to him.”

“My husband is busy at the moment.”

Turalyon practically ran the length of the room to join her, but her phone had already cracked between her fingers and she had locked herself inside her bathroom by the time he joined her bed.

Out of breath, Beve looked down at the now two pieces of her phone that she was still holding in a tight grip, and slowly relaxed her hand to let it fall to the floor. The phone was dead, obviously, and she tried really hard to focus on that and not the hard and painful beating of her heart.

“Beve listen to me!” said Turalyon from the other side of the door.

“Don’t speak, get out of here and don’t come back!” she yelled back, not even realizing that she was using magic to make her order impossible to ignore until the front door was banging behind him in his rush to leave.

_Fuck_ , it was his wife.

He had left her on the penthouse’s couch for his wife.

He had ended their call on her for his wife.

He had a wife.

_Okay_ , she tried to tell herself,  _it’s okay, nothing too important, nothing life ending. You’ve heard and seen and done way worse._

It didn’t make her feel better.

She was getting close to her second century of life, and it wasn’t the first time she was interested in a man, or that a man she was interested in disappointed her gravely. It was, however, the first time she had a mate who turned out to be married.

She remembered her first heartbreak. She had cried in Elina’s arms and the girls had spent an entire week hiding out in the forest on four legs, pretending for a while that boys didn’t exist.

Elina was dead, she remembered, and laying down in her bed under a ton of pillows and covers felt a lot more inviting than the forest, right this moment.

She wiped at her left cheek when she realized that a few tears had rolled there, told herself that it was from shock, and then took the shirt she was wearing off, before deciding that taking another shower would get rid of his scent on her a lot faster and easier.

She did turn into a panther after the shower, and laid down under her sink, closing her eyes and telling herself that the loud roar in her chest was better than the small feeling of happiness and contentment she could feel coming off of the link she shared with Varian.

In fact, now that she wasn’t focused on anything else, she could feel the low thrum of happiness and familiarity running through the entire pack, and she had to remind herself that she hadn’t chosen to be a part of them, that it had been pushed on her.

There were no reasons for her to be sad that they were happy Varian’s _wife_ was in his house, answering his phone and probably eating his fucking risotto.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Five months, a few friends and a mate weren’t enough to make a family. That was what she was trying to tell herself the next morning, as the sun started to peak over the horizon, and the stray cats who liked to hang around her garden at night started leaving.

That was her main problem. That Varian had a wife… well, good for him. He had a son, after all, so it was logical that he had made him with someone else.

What hurt the most was that Beve had been kept out of the loop, that she had been lead to believe that no one was in the picture, that Varian and her were actually _building_ something.

She had lost her family, home and everyone she had ever known once before, and had thought that despite the circumstances, she would be able to find all of that again in the pack and Varian.

Turned out, she had been wrong, and naive, and _stupid_.

A werewolf came at her front door to check on her, but Beve wasn’t an idiot and used her magic to conceal her smell and the noises she made without even having to think about it.

She had been so careful not to let anything slip in front of anyone, it was actually a relief to finally use her magic like that, and she closed her eyes as she heard the werewolf sigh and leave.

It happened again, an hour later, and again she didn’t let them know that she was there. The Alpha was sending people instead of coming himself, and she didn’t see why she’d have to accept that. He had decided that she needed someone to keep an eye on her at all times without giving her a single explanation, and she was starting to think that it was because there was none. He had just wanted to keep her away from the house and his wife, so they could spend time together, and Beve had fallen into it.

God, she was mad at herself for being so crushed that he had lied to her, and the next time a werewolf came at her door, she made sure to make it look like the entire house was completely empty of any life, and had been for quite some time. She listened to their gasp of surprised and fear, gave herself a mental pat on the back, and got more comfortable so she could nap.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Aliden came to her in a dream this time. It was less brutal, and she preferred it. He didn’t talk to her, barely sent her a quick look when she appeared, before going on with his day. Beve, who had no idea why she was there, followed him on four legs and didn’t attempt to do anything.

They were in the throne room, walking down the  length of the long room, passing behind the big pillars, and Beve sent a curious look out the tall windows.

The highest point of Alterac was clearly visible from them, and it hurt, to be so close yet so far from her home and everything she loved and needed.

“Come on,” grumbled Aliden, who had continued without her and was now holding the door out open.

Beve blinked, and joined him in two long strides, before going back to slowly trotting next to him.

“The elders came by earlier, you didn’t miss them by a lot,” he said as they were stepping down the long row of stone stairs, and starting to march on the paved street.

Alterac was about as big as Stormwind, but looked smaller because of its very small and narrow streets and the fact that half of the city had been built directly on the side of the mountains it was housed on.

“We’re having more and more problems with the forest,” continued her brother as they turned a street corner, people sending him side looks and skittering out of his way as fast as possible. “It’s getting to a point where we’re going to have to move the people living down there, and the mountains are getting overcrowded.”

It wasn’t a new problem. Living on the edges and cliffs of a mountain had a lot of advantages when it came to defending themselves, but space was a valuable asset that they had been needing more of a long time ago already. They had some towns and villages down in the forest, but dangerous things lurked there, the kind that you didn’t speak the name of out loud by fear that they would find you, and knowing that this was only getting worse was about the worst news he could have given her.

“We…” Aliden stopped himself as a group of four girls brushed past him in the narrow and dark street, and waited until they had disappeared from view to say, his tone only loud enough for Beve to hear, “we have some new problems too, the kind that came in the open door, a few months ago. The kind that sneaked past our defenses, and destroyed everything that came in their way.”

Their eyes met, pale hazel into light gray, and she got a quick vision, just a flash of fire and destruction.

She shivered and shook herself like a wet dog to get rid of the sensation it brought her.

“I know you made it clear you don’t want to help us,” he continued, stopping in front of a shop – and Beve didn’t recognize it, as she looked at the dusty windows hiding a ton of old books, “but as your brother let me tell you that whatever you’ve been doing lately is really not good for you. This magic smells foul, although it _is_ familiar.”

He looked pensive for a moment, and Beve didn’t understand what he was talking about. She had used nothing but her own magic, which he would recognize anywhere since it was the exact same as his. Maybe it was the werewolf’s that was sticking to her, but that had never seemed foul to her nose, even back when she had hated the pack and hadn’t been a part of them.

The logical explanation, that someone had cast a spell on her, would explain why instead of marching down the pack’s house the second she had heard a strange woman answer her mate’s phone she had laid down on her bathroom floor and stopped moving.

Here in Alterac, the magic cast in Stormwind couldn’t have a hold on her.

She grabbed Aliden’s sleeve between her front teeth, making sure not to touch him with her very sharp canines, as he made to turn and walk into the shop, and he gave her a crooked smile as she looked up at him.

“I know,” he sighed, “I didn’t call you, so obviously you came, even subconsciously, but I’m busy. I’ll look for something though, and I’ll tell you if I find a way to help.”

She let go of his sleeve, watching him smile and gently pat her head before he was disappearing into the shop, and for a second she just stood there, in a paved and cold street of her hometown, the freezing air and floating magic feeling better than anything she had felt in ten years.

She had missed this place, but she couldn’t stay long, so she closed her eyes and inhaled as deep as she could, committing the scents of her home to memory.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Beve woke up to Dimitris banging the door to her bathroom open and looking down at her with worry.

“The pack called me, saying no one has seen you in four days, that your house is completely abandoned and that you cast a spell on one wolf to make him mute before disappearing,” he announced, before coming to sit down on the floor next to her, tangling his fingers into the fur between her shoulder blades. “You want to tell me what happened?”

She couldn’t speak like that, so she had no choice but to turn back into her human form, but she made it clear that it wasn’t by choice that she was doing so.

“Do you smell magic?” she asked.

He took a moment to close his eyes and breathe in deep through his nose.

“Nothing unusual, just yours and the pack.”

“Aliden said there was something, and I don’t really feel like myself.”

Dimitris frowned, his hand still on her back as she sat naked on the floor. They weren’t particularly shy as shapeshifters, and the cold of the tiles on her skin wasn’t a problem, so none of them reached for the clothes she had abandoned on the floor the night before – or three nights ago, apparently.

“You saw him?”

“I went to Alterac during a dream. Has it really been three days?”

“Four,” he corrected. “You went to see Aliden?”

“Not consciously,” she replied, scowling. “We didn’t even do much or talked a lot. He just told me something about foul magic on me, and I think he might be right.”

There was a nagging thought at the back of her mind, but every time she focused on it, it eluded her. She had a feeling that it was important though, but no matter how hard she tried to focus, it would simply slip between her fingers, and she was left here on the bathroom floor with an empty head.

Well, empty except for the despair going through her mind, because she could feel her links with Varian and the pack, and how absolutely ecstatic they were. She was pretty sure no one had _ever_ been this happy since the creation of the universe, and the fact that everyone was feeling this way when she had apparently disappeared for four days only made her feel worse than she already did.

“You should go see the pack if someone is throwing magic on you. It looks like a lot is happening over there, so maybe this is linked.”

“No,” she immediately replied, heart starting to beat faster.

She hadn’t had a panic attack in years – they had been pretty common during her first few months of being a human in this strange world – but she recognized it as soon as it arrived, and she closed her eyes and relaxed when her brother’s cold magic washed over her.

“Okay, there’s something weird going on right now,” he whispered, his hand moving up to her hair that he slowly started caressing. “Let’s get out of here, and relax a little bit on the concealing spell please, it’s getting hard to see past it even for me.”

She nodded and tried really hard to do so, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t relax her grip against her magic.

Dimitris quietly shushed her when she started to panic again.

“Change,” he said, his voice soft and comforting. “Change and then we’ll leave, alright? Get you away from whatever it is that’s preventing you from controlling it, and then find out who did this and kill them.”

She nodded. _Yes, kill it, good._ That, she knew and could control. It didn’t take any effort to slip back into her other skin, thankfully, but she needed some help from Dimitris to get up on her paws, and she stayed leaning against his leg as they slowly made their way through her house, and out on her front lawn.

She sent a quick look over her shoulder, seeing her spell for a second – and okay, it was way too much, her house looked like it hadn’t been lived in in over five years and had been through a typhoon with all doors and windows opened. She blinked, and could see right through her spell again, her house going back to being normal looking.

Dimitris was holding his car’s door open for her when she joined him, and she jumped on his backseat, laying down on it and closing her eyes, immediately falling asleep.

The loud ringing of a phone woke her up with a start.

The car was dark, and parked on the side of a road, and Dimitris was nowhere to be seen.

For a minute, Beve didn’t move, listening.

There was a car parked and running about two blocks away, a rat moving around through trash not that far, and someone panting very, very softly, somewhere on the right side of the car.

Her nose told her who it was, but she couldn’t make sense of why he would be there, so she turned back into her human form just long enough to open the car’s door, before jumping onto the sidewalk, taking the time to stretch all of her limbs, and she started walking slowly in the direction the pants were coming from.

She found Turalyon laying on his belly, teeth gritted hard as he tried to breath through the pain of having a gigantic knife sticking out of his back, right between the shoulder blades.

He whimpered when she stopped next to him and started sniffing around the wound, but he couldn’t move and relaxed a little bit when she licked at his cheek.

The wound smelled of foul magic, and copper, which made her sneeze twice. There was something else though, something just on the edges of it, under Turalyon’s blood and fear and agony. She closed her eyes, found the calm spot in her mind, and focused hard.

Old leather, summer rain and bloody dagger.

The scent she had found in the mountains.

She immediately transformed back, and put her hand on Turalyon’s head.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” she said, knowing, already, that he was just here to send a message. Copper did nothing to werewolves and he was mostly suffering because his wound was trying to close around the weapon, but for people like her and Dimitris…

_Fuck_ , Dimitris was gone and the message was loud and clear.

“I’ll get you out of here,” she said, patting his head a little as she looked through his pockets with her other hand. He had his phone with him, thankfully, and she didn’t have to think before calling Varian.

“Varian Wrynn’s phone,” happily said the voice – always the same.

Beve gritted her teeth, and forced herself to remain calm. She was naked in a place she didn’t know with a bleeding Turalyon. She could wonder why the fuck Varian had given his phone to his wife another time.

“Pass me Varian,” she ordered, but her powers didn’t translate well over the phone line, because instead of doing what she was told, the woman started talking.

“I’m sorry, you are calling from Turalyon’s phone, who is this?”

There was some movement in the background, Beve could hear it, so she decided to take a shot in the dark.

“Turalyon was stabbed and my brother has disappeared – I think he might be dead.”

For a beat, there was absolutely no other sound and Beve looked down at Turalyon, crushed that she had failed him.

The next second Varian’s furious voice was in her ear. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, before suddenly remembering that Dimitris had mentioned her accidentally casting a spell on Turalyon, and she could feel it, under all the other scents on him.

It took more effort than it should have, but she managed to lift it.

The bleeding werewolf tried to speak, but he barely managed to choke something about behind, before he was whimpering again and going lax.

“Shit!” exclaimed Beve as a gust of wind made her hair fly into her face along with a scent hit her nose, and she realized someone was behind her.

She jumped to her feet, letting the phone fall on the ground, Varian’s voice yelling something that she didn’t pay attention to, and came face to face with a shadow that was about double her size in all direction.

“You came,” whispered a cavernous voice, before the shadow was raising its hand.

Beve jumped back, thankful that the spell didn’t touch Turalyon who was still laying down, and slipped into her other form as a second spell was cast.

She jumped back again, widened her stance and showed her teeth, only to realize that the shadow wasn’t moving anymore.

It was looking around.

_He can’t see you_ , whispered a voice at the back of her head, and she remembered what had happened at her house, how she had accidentally projected magic too harshly and had made the entire place look abandoned when she had just wanted to make it seem empty.

Apparently, she still couldn’t control it if she was on four legs, but it was in her favor so she wasn’t about to complain.  She took care not to make any noise as she slowly got closer to her target, before jumping on the shadow and going straight for the neck with her fangs.

She planted her claws in its chest and back too when it tried to dislodge her, and the enemy struggled for all of a minute, before dropping dead when Beve managed to get the right angle and squeezed her jaws together.

The spell hiding her assailant’s appearance shattered at the same time as it died, and she stumbled in shock at the sight of him.

An orc, with green skin and pointy ears.

She shouldn’t have been this surprised, but still. Almost nobody knew about her people and their affliction with copper,  after all . Why would an orc be targeting her  though ? Here in Stormwind of all places?

Aliden had told her that they were back, but she hadn’t expected them to get to her.

She searched him, coming up empty, and teared out a piece of its coat before going back to being a human and using the piece of clothe to protect her hands as she finally took the dagger out of Turalyon’s back.

There was a loud  _pop_ , sounds of the city finally rushing to her ears as the spell that had been blanketing them finally lifted off, and Beve lost no time throwing the dagger away from her, before grabbing Turalyon and turning him over so he was on his back.

“What the fuck just happened?” he asked, looking at her with a dose of respect that hadn’t been there before.

“You can’t tell anyone about it, not yet,” she said. “Where’s my brother?”

“He was bleeding badly when I arrived, and they took him away while I was fighting this one,” he said with a gesture of the chin to the dead orc a few meters away.

“Alright,” she nodded, looking down at the phone she had abandoned. She grabbed it, and redialed Varian’s number.

“Beve!” he said, sounding panicked, and she closed her eyes. Now that there were bodies he finally answered her.

She handed the phone to Turalyon instead of answering and said, knowing that Varian would be able to hear her too: “I need to go look for my brother. Tell him where you are, and make sure you stay away from the fight.”

She heard Varian swear very, very loudly, but she didn’t have time for him.

“Don’t touch the dagger,” she warned as she got up and finally realized that she was naked and while Stormwind was a very hot place, it was still technically winter. She’d lose a toe if she wasn’t careful. “Call Darbel, it’s magical and she should know what to do with it.”

“Why are they after us?” he asked, and she knew he was asking for Varian too, because the Alpha immediately stopped swearing under his breath, listening.

“They’re after me,” she replied, before turning into her other form, and running back to the car. She couldn’t lose anytime, and didn’t have any other lead.

Sniffing around the car did nothing, there was absolutely no scent except hers, so she closed her eyes, reached deep into that cold and calm part of her where Alterac lived, and started convulsing, falling down on her side.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


“Twice now,” said Aliden, raising an eyebrow.

He was sitting at the end of the formal dining table, Beve at the other end about ten meters away.

She didn’t wait a single second with games.

“There are orcs here, and they’ve kidnapped Dimitris.” Her brother paled and tensed, but said nothing. “They had a copper dagger, you know which kind.”

“The kind our father gave them the secret to.”

“I need to find Dimitis before anything worse happens to him.”

“You know there’s nothing I can do if I’m here and you’re there.”

“Aliden…” she started, warning.

“You’re the only one who can come and go as she pleases,” he cut her, getting up and leaning with his hands on the table, getting slightly closer. “I promise to help you, _especially_ since I came to you a few days ago about this exact issue.”

She looked away for a moment, telling herself that the burn in her throat wasn’t shame.

A queen was never ashamed, she had been told.

“Fine,” she decided, and just like that all the tension in the room vanished as Aliden closed his eyes and hung his head down.

“Thank you,” he whispered, “I’ll be waiting for you at the Altar.”

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


There was a werewolf a few meters away from her when she stopped convulsing and came back to herself. Caramel fur, black  eyes . She had never seen it before, but it  smelled strongly of Axe bodyspray so she knew it was Mathias.

Either the werewolves had been extremely close to where Turalyon had been stabbed, or she had greatly miscalculated her talent to mentally visit Alterac.

She got up on shaky paws, and just stared at Mathias, determined to have him look away first – which he did after about ten seconds, not bad.

Once it was done, she focused on what was going on behind him: Darbel, who was standing with the coat-wrapped dagger in hands, and Varian standing right next to her, both staring.

It wasn’t how she had imagined her secret going out, but it wasn’t like she had a choice, and at least now it was out and she could focus on Dimitris. It was more important than Varian’s stony face, she told herself as she took a step and Mathias started groaning at her. More important than the way a muscle jumped in his jaw when she took another step in his direction. More important than the disappointment she could feel drifting off of him, along with some feminine perfume she wasn’t familiar with.

He had a secret wife so it wasn’t like he could be mad at her  for  being dishonest.

“Beve,” softly said Darbel, shaking her head when she turned to look at her.

The witch knew exactly what was about to happen, Beve could read it in her eyes, and she didn’t like the crushed expression she could also see there. She didn’t know how things could get any worse than they already were, but she guessed that at this point more problems wouldn’t make that big of a difference.

Still, she sat down like a sphinx,  and looked back at Mathias.

“That’s enough Shaw,” snapped Varian, starting to walk to them. “Let’s get back to the house and deal with it,” he said, not looking at Beve as he said that. It hurt, and she knew he could feel it as clearly as she could feel the barely contained fury going through their mate link, but he simply ignored her as he walked to the gigantic matte black SUV parked right in front of Dimitris’ car.

Darbel followed him, looking at her feet, and Beve pretended she didn’t have any problem with having Mathias at her back as she did the same, going to sit between the backseat and the back of the driver’s seat.

It had to be the longest ride ever, with Mathias in the front seat who didn’t stop staring at her the whole time, and the copper dagger on Darbel’s lap making Beve feel dizzy and nauseous.

She hoped the witch could get rid of the magic on it, otherwise she’d have to do it and it was a very long and painful process.  But first, she had to find her brother and kill all the orcs responsible for his kidnapping – and also probably the weird spell that had been put on her.

They arrived at Varian’s big mansion and all left the car without losing time, Mathias still staying behind Beve. She was pretty sure she’d win in a fight against him – but probably not while the dagger was so close to her – so she said nothing, staying close to Darbel just in case.

The inside of the house was a little more full than she was used, but not as full as it had been when she had come looking for the Alpha.

“Everyone except Beve stay here,” ordered Varian as they arrived into the entryway. He didn’t stay anything else, but she understood the obvious message and followed him up the stairs, and into the master bedroom.

It was a large and very luminous room, with the big window giving a beautiful view of the canals, his pristine garden, and the wild weeds in Beve’s. It was probably the reason why it drove him crazy that she absolutely refused to do anything to it. The summer heat was usually enough to burn off everything except some very stubborn weeds, and Beve always let them live by respect.

Everything that survived such a burn deserved to be left alone to live.

The rest of the room was exactly as could be expected from Varian. There was a white door leading to a bathroom, thick cream carpet on the floor, and a gigantic bed that was always well made, but with no more than two pillows. He wasn’t a man for flourish, which he proved as he went to lean against the door leading to his bathroom, on the opposite side of the room from Beve, crossed his arms, and asked, voice icier than the glaciers in her home.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

She needed clothes for this conversation, and probably projected this thought too loud, before a second later he was sighing with impatience and stepping away from the doorway.

“Go take a shower, you know where are the clothes and towels. Be fast.”

She hated his tone of voice, but couldn’t answer except with growls, so she kept quiet and went into the bathroom, waiting until he had closed the door behind her and went to sit on the bed before transforming back into a human.

It hurt a little, because of the seizure and all that copper, but she lost no time  getting under the hot water and scrubbing at her skin. It felt good, and she blushed a little when she tried to remember how many days it had been since her last  one  and she couldn’t remember, but as soon as she was finished she stepped out and walked to the walk-in closet connected to this room.

She smelled like Varian, with his soap and his clothes on her skin, and as she found a discarded hair-tie in the sink’s drawer and started putting her hair up in a ponytail, she forced herself to ignore it.

A critical look in the mirror told her everything she already knew: she looked as bad as she felt, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t here to look pretty for anyone. She had to save Dimitris and get a very important conversation with her lying mate over with.

She felt more courageous when she stepped back into the bedroom and realized that Varian too, had giant blue circles under his eyes.

“Where have you been those past few days?” he asked, sounding tired as he looked up at her but didn’t move from the bed.

She leaned against the doorway to the bathroom, mirroring his position from earlier.

“I was home, where were you?”

“I had pack business to take care of.”

“Pack I’m a part of,” she said, before adding quickly when he opened his mouth to reply, “Turalyon had to almost die for you to finally answer your phone.”

He looked down at this, smelling of embarrassment and shame as he rubbed at his face.

“I wanted to tell you everything but your _wife_ kept answering your phone,” she said after a moment, her voice more cutting than she had tried to make it.

Varian sharply looked up at that.

“My wife?”

“Look, it doesn’t matter anyway,” she forced herself to say, swallowing through the lump on her throat and trying not to show how his intense eyes suddenly looking into hers were making her hands shake, “I wasn’t expecting you to show up so early. I need to go find Dimitris and take care of those orcs.”

“It took us four hours to find you,” he calmly announced, getting up from the bed. “Should I be worried about you having a seizure?”

She shook her head, straightening up and widening her stance when he started walking toward her.

“What do you have to say about the fact that you were definitely not a human when we arrived?”

She raised her chin as he stopped in front of her, frowning slightly. Head up, shoulders back, like she had learned in court.  _Don’t you ever let them see your weaknesses_ , said her father’s voice at the back of her mind. She never had, and wouldn’t start now with Varian, whether he was her mate or not.

It wasn’t hard to control her spell better this time and make it impossible for him to smell her emotions, unlike she could with him – she smelled the confusion coming off of him the second the spell crystallized around her, but his face didn’t let it show.

“I’ve never been a human a day in my life,” she replied, bracing for his reaction.

He had none. The link between them only told her about the underlining happiness of those past days, and the disappointment.

It hurt more than she wanted to admit, but she kept a very tight grip on her poker face.

“It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I needed you, and you were too busy, so I found a solution myself.”

He started to say something, but a scent caught Beve’s focus, and she looked over Varian’s shoulder and at the door just as it was opening.

Varian stopped her from throwing herself at the petite blonde woman standing there by wrapping both arms around her waist and holding her up so her feet weren’t touching the floor anymore.

“She’s with them!” she screamed, trying to get out of his grip.

Varian completely ignored her, instead yelling at the other woman “Get out of here Tiffin! Now!”

That had Beve stop moving, all the fight draining out of her as she simply blinked at her, Tiffin Wrynn, his wife.

For a hot minute, no one moved in the bedroom.

“Wha-what’s going on?” asked Tiffin after a moment.

“You smell just like them,” spat Beve, every muscle in her body ready to attack, but something in her mind was stopping her, something that she couldn’t identify no matter how hard she tried. “You wear their magic. Why did they send you?”

Tiffin only turned her big scared blue eyes on Varian, lower lip trembling, and in a second he had let go of Beve who fell against the doorway, and was by his wife’s side, standing right between her and Beve as if to shield her with his body.

_Alright then._ She had decimated a whole orc clan once upon a time, and she’d do it again. Ten years of being a human might have made her weaker in some aspects, but she hadn’t forgotten who she was, and as she raised her hand and gathered magic around her, something again stopped her. The nagging feeling was only getting more and more insistent, and she only had to nudge it back before her ears popped, and suddenly she was submerged by fear and anger and despair, the happy feeling of the pack vanishing like it had never been there.

Varian and her fell to their knees, and Beve finally realized, as this Tiffin woman was kneeling next to Varian and asking him if he was alright all while sending her furious glances, that the spell had been put on all of them, through their links.

“Get away from him,” she gritted between her teeth, getting back up, and she didn’t know what she looked like, but Tiffin immediately stopped moving and Varian very slowly got back up and took a step closer to her.

“Beve,” he said, prudently, “I have no idea what is going on, but please calm down.”

She only blinked at the tears of pure rage in her eyes instead, still keeping her eyes firmly planted on Tiffin. She wasn’t a witch, but there was something on her that was giving off the very distinct smell of orc magic, even if the werewolves couldn’t tell.

“Are you wearing any jewelry?”

Tiffin started shaking as she slowly reached up for her earrings, understanding what Beve wanted without her having to ask. She let both diamonds fall to the floor, before taking her thin golden watch off, and doing the same with the giant diamond on her left ring finger.

Beve didn’t look at the wedding ring as it fell to the ground too, but the pang in her stomach was probably felt because Varian whispered her name.

She ignored him.

“Anything else?”

Tiffin pulled up her right pant leg to reach for the little ankle bracelet she had, and Beve knew this was it.

“Throw this one at me,” she ordered, whistling between her teeth when she grabbed it in the air and her flesh immediately started burning.

She let the bracelet fall down at her feet, and threw her spell knowing that there was going to be a  hole in the floor and that no one better be on the first floor right under her, but not caring if anyone got  hurt or sad about  the ruined carpet.

There was a louder popping sound than before, Tiffin fainted with a small noise and Darbel entered in the room all of a second later with round eyes.

“Beve,” she whispered.

“Give me the dagger. I can’t destroy it here, that would annihilate the whole neighborhood,” she said. Maybe it was an exaggeration, maybe not. That small little ankle bracelet had been enough that she had felt it in her teeth when destroying it, and while she was angry at the entire world at the moment, she also wasn’t willing to let civilians die.

“Beve,” said Varian, “listen.”

She ignored him, grabbing the dagger when Darbel handed it prudently, the smell of her burned palms immediately filling the room, before turning to the closed door leading to the bathroom.

It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

“You promised me Beve, you said you’d stay,” said Darbel as she started her spell. It was a little tricky, to draw a point from here to Alterac, but thankfully she was aiming for the Altar, which was a place of power and easier to find as such. “Please, I know how this ends, you need to stay here, I can promise you there’s a solution.”

“It’s too late for that,” gritted Beve. It would have been easier for her if the dagger hadn’t been in her now bleeding hands, but she’d rather keep it close, now that she knew someone had either send Varian’s wife to take a shot at her, or she had conspired against her all by herself – or with the help of the pack, but while this was the first conclusion she had reached, she refused to think about it now, while in the middle of enemy territory.

“I swear on all that is sacred that Dimitris will not die,” she said. “Please, I know how this ends, and no one wants that.”

“The wolves betrayed me,” was all she could reply as she finished off her spell. “Betray means death, by all means necessary.”

Betray meant she’d never see any of them again. She didn’t want to kill them off one after the other, so leaving forever was a good alternative.

Still, she took a second to look back at Varian as she put her hand on the bathroom’s doorknob.

“Consider my debt of life repaid,” she said, the words rolling off her tongue easily, “we shall now be free from each other.”

And without waiting for a reaction from him, she opened the bathroom door to a snowy slope, and went through the portal.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The cold was biting, as always, and the wind roared through the nearby valley as Beve took her first step in a decade in her home. The dagger was burning through her palm, but she was too overwhelmed to pay any attention to it.

It was over, everything. No more pack, no more werewolves and no more Varian. It hurt, but she couldn’t think about it, not yet. First, Dimitris and the orcs, then maybe she’d take time to sit down and wallow in self-pity.

For now though, she marched with determination to the sacred Altar, able to feel the power pulsing form there deep in her chest, and under her feet. Alterac wasn’t only her home, it was also a place of power, the place where she got hers, and being here made her stronger. With the help of Aliden and the elders, they’d find Dimitris and take care of the orcs in no time.

Aliden was already waiting for her at the altar, dressed in all white in his ceremonial clothes, and he held his head down as she stepped next to him, and looked up at the perpetual snow falling here, each flake more powerful than an entire army. She closed her eyes when they started falling in her direction without any wind blowing, feeling them stick to her hair and eyelashes. _Mine, mine,_ said the Mountain.

_Yes_ whispered the animal part of her in return.

“Something’s different,” she whispered though. The words were coming before she could really think about them, which already told her that they weren’t hers.

The Mountain was talking through her.

“The elders can’t hear the Mountain anymore,” replied Aliden.

The wind immediately started howling through the peaks and valleys as she opened her eyes to look at him, and they both knew it was Beve’s surprise manifesting.

“Since when?”

“Since you bled out here, on the sacred peak, right before that first portal closed behind you.”

“If I had known the situation was so bad…” she started, but stopped as her brother turned to give her a small smile.

“You’re here now,” he said. “Can you feel it?”

She nodded. “Can you?”

“No, but I’m not its Heir.”

It was true, although it should have changed the day she had left Alterac. He should have become the Heir and gotten the gifts that came with the title.

“You should try, just in case,” he suggested, and Beve knew exactly that he was testing her, and she couldn’t back down from _that_ challenge.

Raising her head up high, she didn’t even have to move before the wind was blowing hard on them, the blue sky thundering with a faraway storm. She had to focus just a little more – it had been a long time since her training after all, and she hadn’t had her powers again for long – but it was negligible compared to what it had taken her to open the portal back, and suddenly the sky was covered in huge clouds.

Then it started snowing.

“Damn,” breathed Aliden next to her, his face tilted up to the sky. “It hasn’t snowed since you killed Father.”

It was bad, _really_ bad. Their people had powers, but most of it they took from Alterac itself, and the easiest way for the mountain to express and share its power was through snow. For all of her life here it had snowed non-stop except on some really rare occasions, and the dry days never lasted more than forty-eight hours.

Beve knew now why Darbel had made her promise not to come back – she couldn’t leave, not if it meant leaving her people and Alterac deprived of the only thing bridging the gab between the two: her.

She sighed.

“Let’s go to the castle to discuss some battle plans. We’ll have time to talk about the Mountain after we’re done saving Dimitris.”

Aliden didn’t reply, but he did follow her when she started walking.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Everyone had known that she was back when it had started to snow, and there had been what looked like the entire population of Alterac waiting on their knees in the streets leading all the way to the castle, waiting to salute her with respect. Beve had pretended that she couldn’t see them, had repeated to herself that her priority was her brother, and that she could think about what it meant for her to be here later.

She wasn’t under any illusion though. She’d be crowned Queen whether she liked it or not. It was her birth right, and the Mountain itself had made that clear right then.

She was sitting in a little office on the third floor of the castle for now, a large wooden desk separating her from Aliden as he filled her in on the orcs’ position in Alterac, pointing at the map on the desk as he explained what they had already done, how many had been killed on both sides, where the attacks had happened.

He was a better tactician than her, had always been, and she listened carefully as he explained what they had tried to do, and why they had succeeded or failed.

“In short,” he said as a closing remark, “we outnumber them and know the grounds better than them, but can’t get the upper hand because they simply overpower us.”

“But the snow is to our advantage,” she said, reading it in his eyes.

He smirked and nodded. “Exactly, and we haven’t shown them everything that we got.”

She knew exactly what he wanted to do before he even started talking.

“They’ve never seen me in my other form, and they don’t know you’re here – probably don’t even know what you can do. I think we should go as soon as possible and hit them as hard as we can. Leave them reeling, and as they try to run back, we send more men. Be as unrelenting as can be. We shouldn’t let them get their breath back.”

“I agree, let me just change.”

The smile he gave her was absolutely predatory, and she smiled back in the exact same fashion.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The only reason they made prisoners was because they needed some information about what was going on outside of Alterac, and where Dimitris was being kept. What they got wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was extremely cliché.

Vengeance against Beve, who had massacred them a decade ago. Vengeance against the Alteraci, who had promised them  refuge on their lands – it wasn’t technically true, since their  _father_ had, and he was dead now, but Beve could overlook that.  Vengeance, plain and simple, against everything and everyone.

Orcs were Faes, and Beve didn’t care for any of them. They came from Faery, and she was  from Alterac, and the only place they could ever meet was on Azeroth, where humans lived their life in blissful ignorance. If orcs were being persecuted by their other fae brothers, it wasn’t really her problem, and it wasn’t going to make her feel more sympathetic for them as they came to her home to kill and steal.

She asked about Tiffin, and all they could tell her was that one of them had given her the ankle bracelet as a gift before a bunch of them had attacked her, knowing that she would immediately run to her Alpha husband, who also happened to be living right next to Beve.

They hadn’t known that Beve was Varian’s mate, but it hadn’t mattered anyway because they had described the spell they had used to her, and she knew that her link to Varian and the pack had played in  their favor. She hadn’t been in contact with this Tiffin up until the night before, but the magic had still reached her through the werewolves who had.

As for Dimitris, no one could say if he was still alive. They were keeping him in a boat,  in the port,  and that was all everyone knew.

That was good enough for Beve, who lost no time going back to the Altar to destroy the dagger that had been used against Turalyon.

  
  


  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The sun was setting over the port, leaving Stormwind under a hue of blues and purples. It was beautiful, and Beve distantly thought that she should take it all in, since it was more than probably the last time she was seeing the city, but  instead she  cast a hiding spell on both her bother and her , and slowly slithered over the very out of place red yacht anchored a few meters away.

It hadn’t been too hard to track the orcs down, now that Beve knew where to look and  had full access to Alterac. Aliden and her had debated over what to do for a while, but they had both agreed from the start that only the two of them would go rescue Dimitris. They didn’t know what would wait for them on that boat, and didn’t want to risk anyone. Having less people to have to worry about while they focused on the orcs was better.

Aliden  was in his other form, slipping from shadows to shadows, a blurry figure following Beve on four legs. He was as silent as death itself, and she knew he was a formidable fighter, more graceful than her. She usually used as much force and power to attack  as she could , while he liked to consider every fight like a ballet. Their styles were different, but they had learned to fight together, and had perfected it about a century ago. They worked best as a team, and there was no doubt in Beve’s mind that they would bring an end to those orcs once and for all and save their little brother.

The inside of the boat was all sleek light wood and white furniture, and Aliden took out the two orcs guarding the way down and into the cabins before they had time to process the woman standing in front of them. She was using the spell she had used before, to hide in her bathroom, but just enough to make it hard to detect her until she was too close.

It was more fun like that.

She took care of the other orc they found in the hallway, just a small spark of magic and he was dead, before both siblings were stopping dead on their track and exchanging a glance.

It suddenly smelled really really bad. Like death, decay, vile magic. And something else, something sour like pure unbridled rage, and sweat, and pain.  Closing her eyes, Beve focused even more, and she found it, underneath all of that, the smell of a pine forest on a winter morning, honeyed bread and family.

Dimitris was here, and still alive.

Something else was here though, something Beve had encountered before. This warlock magic she had had a hard time dealing with in Alterac – and this time she wasn’t home, couldn’t count on its protection.

They’d have to be careful,  but they had been expecting it anyway.

Going from room to room, they killed off everyone, knowing that if the orcs had the chance, they’d do the same to them, and they couldn’t let them live anyway, not after throwing a spell at Beve and the entire pack. Beve might have decided to kiss the werewolves goodbye for good, it didn’t mean that the message wasn’t clear. She was a part of the pack, so they were hers, and no one attacked her people.

It took them a long time, and they ran into trouble in the form of a group of six orcs, all chucking spells and knowing how to fight, but between the two of them, Beve at full magical powers, nothing worse than a few burns and cuts happened to them, and they went on.

Dimitris was at the very bottom of the boat, in a large room that must have been the master bedroom before they had turned it into a torture chamber. Their brother was chained to a chair with some sort of copper chains that made Beve’s stomach revolt just with the smell coming off of them, and standing right behind him, one hand gripping his hair back to expose his throat and his other holding a very shiny looking enchanted copper dagger to said throat, was an orc that Beve was intimately familiar with.

“Krusk,” she said, as she took one step into the room, and stopped.

She could feel Aliden against her left leg, and put one hand on his shoulders, stopping him from immediately jumping on the orc.

“Beve,” he said, “I heard congratulations are in order. You’re finally a Queen.”

She didn’t react, too busy trying to make sense of this particular orc’s presence here, in Stormwind, with a very dangerous dagger on her brother’s neck.

Krusk was, although it pained her to admit it, a good person. He was an orc yes, and had been terrorizing people in Alterac before she had acted, but he had also never chose any of this. Some orcs had been terribly happy to come to Alterac and experiment on the people there with this new magic they had decided to play with. Krusk hadn’t been one of them, but he hadn’t had a choice when his entire clan had decided to move.

Beve had met him while she was investigating another disappearance, and he had been instrumental in her victory against the orcs and her father – which was why him and his family were still alive to this day.

Which was why he was the absolute last orc she had expected to this there.

“We need to talk,” he said when Beve didn’t move.

“All of your men are dead,” she informed him, which he only gave a nod to. “I found the human you used to throw that spell on me, and destroyed that pretty trinket you had given her.”

“This is all a big misunderstanding,” said Krusk, “but I’m lucky it happened. You weren’t the target for that spell.” Beve froze at that, heart starting to beat faster. “It was just unlucky for my… master, that the Alpha she decided to attack also happened to be so close with the one person capable of defeating her.”

“Why take Dimitris then? Why use those weapons that do not work against werewolves, but against us?”

“I needed to get your attention, to let you know that something was wrong. That magic… it’s too vile, too strong, I knew just coming up to you to tell you to be careful would do nothing.”

“So instead you kidnapped my brother?”

“This was… an unfortunate turn of event,” he said, looking down at Dimitris whose anger grew double, if the smell of it was any indication. “I can unchain him, now that you’ve killed all the others, but you need to fulfill that promise you made me.”

To not hurt him or those he considered his in any way.

“Can I trust you?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

Her only answer to that was a nod, and slowly, Krusk let go of Dimitris’ hair and the dagger disappeared.

Beve kept her eyes firmly fixed on Dimitris as the orc bent down and started taking the chains off, her fingers gripping Aliden’s fur tightly. She didn’t trust her brothers not to do anything harsh and stupid, since they didn’t know the orc like she did, and she couldn’t afford it, not if the danger was bigger than her and a few orcs seeking vengeance.

Not if the danger was directed at Varian, supplied her treacherous brain. He was her mate, and her most primal instinct was to protect him at all cost, and the fact that he had a petite blonde wife that he loved enough to protect even though she had just thrown a spell on the entire pack didn’t matter much.

Dimitris joined her side the second he was free, leaning heavily against the wall, but not looking too roughed up, which already proved that Krusk could be trusted. Beve had seen what orcs could do, when they wanted to make someone suffer, and that was very far from it.

“Tell me everything.”

“You already know all there is to know,” he replied, moving to sit down on the chair Dimitris had been occupying, crossing his large arm over his chest and raising his chin. “I’ve told you who showed us the way to Alterac first.”

He had, and she shivered in panic as the pieces started to fall into place.

“What about the werewolves? Why them?”

“The Alpha had a run in with my master a few years ago. She kept him as a puppet for a while, did terrible things to him, it’s still a mystery how he survived and managed to run away. She was very badly hurt in the process, but now she’s all healed up, and she wants her toy back.”

Beve was the one who had to lean against something this time, and thankfully Aliden was here, taking her weight without batting an eye.

“Is she in Alterac now?”

Krusk shook his head. “She’s in Faery. She’s still too weak to come and take on a full pack of werewolves, but this was only the first step in her plan to conquer them back, starting with that Alpha.”

“When did she get to Faery?”

“A long time ago. That’s where she took him when she finally made him fall into her trap.”

So Varian had been made prisoner by a dragon princess a few years ago in Faery – that would explain the scars – and for the first time since she had met him, she wished she had told him the truth about her nature and where she had come from. Her people knew dragons all too well, had decimated them, once upon a time,  and the only ones left had either left Alterac  centuries ago, or were hiding out in the forest, feeding on lost farmers in the hope that no one would catch them.

“I can’t go to Faery and declare war to her.”

“You don’t have to,” immediately replied Krusk. “We were her best bet, the last few of the warriors she still had. Without us, it will take her _decades_ to weave her way back out here.”

“She gave you those daggers though, and sent orcs back into Alterac.”

“If you managed to destroy the spell she had thrown at this human woman, then there’s nothing you have to worry about.”

She wanted to believe him, she really did, but dragons were a tricky thing.

They were old, and powerful, and wildly unpredictable. If this dragon princess – who had first taken a liking to Beve’s father – was now determined to get Varian, it meant he wouldn’t be safe as long as she was breathing.

Fuck, how Beve wanted her dead – had wanted to kill her herself for a very long time now.

It was strange, to think that while Beve had been plotting to kill her father, Varian had been fighting against the very same dragon that had made Beve’s life difficult.

“I have no reason not to trust you Krusk,” she said after a while, taking the problem in her head and stretching it every way she could think of. “You’ve helped me once, and I can recognize that you’re doing this again, which is why I’m asking you to come to me directly next time your master makes a move.”

Krusk got up from the chair and hit his chest with his right fist, a sign of respect in his culture.

“I will. I trust you will take the right decisions once again.”

She did the same gesture as he had.

“I will,” she said.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The spell to make her house look completely abandoned was still in full effect, which worked out in their favor since there was a naked Aliden on her couch, covered only by the soft baby pink duvet that had been thrown over the back of said couch when they had arrived.

Dimitris looked exhausted but his wounds had started to heal the second he had been freed from the copper chains in the boat, and as Beve paced the length between her coffee table and television, both of her brothers on the couch, she wondered what the fuck she was supposed to do now.

“How come you never told us it was a dragon that had lead the orcs to Alterac?” was the first question Aliden asked, of course.

“By the time I was absolutely sure of it, I was too busy trying to murder our dear father,” she replied, stopping her pacing to face them. “Listen, her name is Onyxia, and she’s no easy foe. I’ve seen what her magic can do and I’m not sure I can do anything to her permanently outside of Alterac. We all know how dragons are, and what it takes to kill one for good.”

Her brothers both nodded gravely. It was the first thing you learned, as an Alteraci.

_The Mountain shared her power to the people to protect itself from The Fire Lord. In the heart of winter rose a champion made of ice, Its chosen Heir, who slayed the Lord with a touch of a finger._

The story went on and on about the Fire Lord’s bloodthirsty children seeking revenge, and how a champion was chosen every time the last one died, to protect Alterac and its people.

It was all nice and dandy, except Beve was now the champion, and it had been about twelve generation that no one had had to fight a dragon. The ones still in Alterac were sneaking and didn’t cause enough problem to have to be hunted down – but then again, Aliden  _had_ said that the forests were becoming more and more dangerous.

She knew what she was supposed to do, but it didn’t mean that it enchanted her, and she could see in her brothers’ eyes that they knew too, and thought the same.

“Dimitris, you’ll stay here for a while please, report back your findings to me. I want to know every move of every magical creature you can find. Fae, vampires, witches. I don’t care. I want to know everything.”

He nodded. “You can count on me.”

“Aliden and I will go back. We have some dragons to hunt down, and I’m pretty sure there are some portals hidden deep into the forest that we have to take a look at.”

“No one has ever gone this deep into the forest,” replied Aliden, not that he looked scared or anything. It was just an observation, but one that said a lot.

First Beve had killed her own father and rose to the title of Queen and Heir to the Mountain, and now she was about to start an all out war against whatever was hiding in the deepest parts of Alterac, which was unheard of. The elders wouldn’t be happy, nor will the citizens of Alterac, but they didn’t have choice in the matter. They could elect Aliden or anyone else as Prince Consort if they wanted to, she’d still do what needed to be done.

“We’ll make it up as we go,” she said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s not like we have a choice in the matter.”

“Aye,” said her brothers in tandem, before Aliden was slipping back into his other skin and jumping off the couch while Dimitris was getting up.

“Don’t forget this,” he said as she was starting to cast the spell for a portal to Alterac.

He went to the kitchen part of her house, grabbed the small brown box that had been left on her front door what felt like an eternity ago, and handed it to her.

She didn’t want to think about it, or Varian, or anything that had happened between them. She had announced that his debt of life was repaid, so he didn’t owe her anything, and with the way she had acted she doubted he wanted anything to do with her. Too bad the animal part of her was still chanting  _mate mate mate_ anytime she so much as got a fleeting whiff of his scent floating somewhere in the house.

She still grabbed the box, because what else was she supposed to do? Cry and sob and scream for him to come and hug her? No, she had more pressing matters to handle, and was too old for that anyway.

Dimitris nodded, and quickly hugged her tight, before Beve was crossing the portal, telling herself that this had been her very last time on Azeroth, ever.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The coronation happened exactly eight days later. The whole of Alterac came to the sacred Altar to watch Beve stand under the perpetual snow, grab the anointed weapon, and cut herself from wrist to elbow and bleed on the snow.

She had been prepared for it her whole life, and the Mountain had talked to her before – hell, she had even died once – so the whole ritual was over pretty fast and with no hitch on her part. Once it was done, the Elders recited the Sacred Texts, she promised to give her life and essence to Alterac, to become one with the Mountain and act in the good of all Alteraci, and watched as thousands upon thousands of people all got on their knees in front of her, the snow falling from the sky stopping just for a second, all snowflakes suspended in the air in respect for this moment, as she grabbed the crown, and put it on her head.

It was heavy, but so was the responsibility she was now shouldering, and she smiled down at Aliden when their eyes met.

His father might have killed her and stripped her of all powers ten years ago, she had never felt as victorious as she was in this very moment.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She only thought about the brown box about five weeks later, after she had taken a long and hot shower to get rid of all the dragon blood covering her. The bastard had fought hard, and had managed to fly away before she had finished it off, but it was wounded enough that she didn’t need to worry about it for the night.

She slipped into her pajamas, sat cross-legged in the middle of her gigantic bed, and finally opened it.

Her heart dropped, as she looked down at the two sets of keys in the box. One for the ridiculous mansion on top of the slope next to her house, the other for the  equally ridiculous penthouse in downtown Stormwind.

He had given her the keys to his homes.

She couldn’t stop the tears, nor the sobs that she had to muffle in her pillows, but she knew she was crying as much because of pain as she was because of anger. There was nothing that could be done now. She wasn’t in Alterac, and wouldn’t leave, and he was in Stormwind, and wouldn’t come.

He had his wife and son and pack, and she had her brother and people.

That didn’t stop the other part of her, the animal  part that functioned on instinct  and feelings , to cry out for her mate.


End file.
